Ofeibea Quist-Arcton
1 January 2003
(Page 2 of 3)
And if you are arrested on Friday night, you will only be able to go to court on Monday morning. So it's hugely disproportionate punishment for not having this useless little bit of paper. And you can go into a Kenyan police cell for 48 hours. It's horrific for a young woman going home at 8 o'clock in the evening. That's very difficult choice.
Now if that individual pays 100 shillings to those police, to what extent is that corruption? It is a question we have been asking ourselves. Obviously a corrupt transaction has taken place, because a sanction has been avoided. But we are beginning to say: how do we deal with and how do we categorise this class of corruption where it's the poor, hawkers on the side of the street being chased around by City Council people?
It happens right in front of our building here. The only way to stop it happening is to give these people something, otherwise they'll beat you and confiscate your goods and that takes food away from the table for families.
So, how corruptible is the Kenyan is a question that has to be asked together with how weak and how poor is the Kenyan? Those questions go together.
Are bribery and corruption common knowledge and do the Kenyan people know that the big shots are enriching themselves?
Yes, it's common knowledge among Kenyan people. The connections are not often made in monetary terms. You can see it from the behaviour of the political class. They are quite ostentatious in the way the spend and that kind of thing. So you can tell that there is a huge amount of resources that is going into these pockets.
But, even though Kenyans realise that this is happening, it is only now that we are beginning to put figures on it. We need to show how much does a minister earn and how much to they contribute, say, to 'harambees' - a system of social philanthropy in Kenya.
Harambee means to pull together. It's Kenya's national motto, the word 'harambee' is on our coat of arms. And it worked very well for a very long time, where people comes together, raises some money, builds a school, builds a hospital, helps pay someone's hospital bills or sends somebody for education overseas . . . It's very successful.
Harambee has become one of the main ways in which our politicians are seen as being development conscious. So the effectiveness of a politician to deliver development to his own or her own constituency is to an extent determined by the number of harambees they hold or the amount of money they are able to raise for the development projects in a given constituency.
That means politicians compete to raise money at harambees. Some of them raise a lot of money for harambees. Where does it come from? Because it is so much that it is completely unthinkable that it comes from their salaries.
So, by quantifying these kinds of issues, then people are able to address these issues in a much more concrete sort of way. It becomes even difficult to describe it as corruption at that point, because that makes it a very loaded word, because the entire political class does it.
Who is quantifying this practice, who is putting figures on it?
We are putting figures on it at Transparency International (TI) Kenya. We have an ongoing study on harambees for example. All we do is collect this information which is in the newspapers every weekend, that such and such a politician has raised x amount of money in this place.
All we do is draw up a list of what people are contributing and we total it every year. We produce the figures. We don't point figures and judge or say this or that. We just say this is how much so and so raised at 200 harambees last year. Let the Kenyan people and parliamentarians decide what to do about this institution. Because the most important thing here, and this is the opinion of TI Kenya, is that the harambee is a Kenyan institution, a unique Kenyan institution, and we don't want to get rid of it. We just want to have more accountability here.
Have the institutions and mechanisms set up to combat corruption made any difference? Are they effective?
So far the different institutions and legal instruments that have been put in place to fight corruption, particularly since 1997 at the instance of the International Monetary Fund, have not been effective. Every time they seem to start becoming effective, some apparently very good reason for them not working is found. And then they stop working.
So, so far I would say that different instruments that have been there for fighting corruption have not actually work. What they have done, however, is raise public awareness about the fight against corruption which is important also.
And yet there's a whole building in central Nairobi rising up into the sky, called is it Transparency House, something like that?
Integrity Centre! Yes, it's a very good message. As I said it has raised good public awareness. You saw it, you know about it now. I think we are now reaching the end of our public awareness phase, because cynicism is beginning to build in.
We have an Integrity Centre, we have an anti-corruption authority - that is now called the Kenya Police Anti-Corruption Unit. In April, we created anti-corruption courts, with two magistrates appointed specifically to that position. We have a Kenya anti-corruption commission bill which is due before parliament. We have a public ethics code of conduct bill that is due before parliament, waiting for presidential assent. I can go on and on about the different instruments that are there for the fight against corruption in Kenya, but that are not being effected yet.
The conclusion has been that a lot of what has been lacking to make these instruments work is political will. And I would tend to agree with that. The top leadership felt that if some of these instruments came into power, it would affect them.
The challenge now with the new government is that there will be an opportunity to implement some of these measures.
Talking about the top leadership in Kenya, what about outgoing President Daniel arap Moi. Is he perceived as corrupt, is he corrupt, what is your information?
Transparency International doesn't actually investigate individual cases of corruption. As a rule we don't. We don't have any figures on Moi and we don't plan to investigate him or any other Kenyan.
I think, in a situation when a country is perceived not only by the international community but by its own citizens as having a great problem of corruption and leaders who are mentioned endlessly in the media as being involved in activities that can be described as corruption, the fact that those leaders remained in positions of public trust, appointed by the president and the fact that the president continued to trust and rely on these individuals, led many people to conclude that corruption started at the top in Kenya and started with President Moi.
There is a saying: "Tell me with whom you are and I will tell you who you are". If the president was surrounded by all these people, then it touches him.
And post-Moi?
Our experience at Transparency International, and we have about 30 chapters across Africa, our experience is that, regardless of who takes over, whenever you have a major transition and especially when the incumbent who is leaving power has been in power for a long period of time - and when patronage elites have consolidated around this leader for a long period of time - that when that leader goes, you have a window of opportunity that lasts about 24 months.
It doesn't matter who takes over. They are going to be anti-corruption. I can almost write their speeches. It doesn't matter who wins. Corruption is going to be number one. It is the same across Africa. Even when you have coups in Africa, where you have the former presidents being taken to a peace and shot, people will say it was because this person was corrupt.
So, the new president is going to be anti-corruption.
And after that 24-month grace period even if the person in charge appears sincere?
I think this is the lesson of Kenya and the lesson for all of us in Africa. Will he be sincere is not only dependent on him and the people around him but on us, as Kenyans. Kenyan civil society, Kenyan media and Kenyan people - we have to keep them sincere. They are going to make promises; it is our duty to hold them to those promises. It's our duty to keep on putting pressure.
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